It's Complicated (2 page)

That was the end of her morning ritual with Laura. He’d invited her in, and Mike had poked his head around the kitchen to say “hi” and welcome her to join them for breakfast, but it had felt intrusive. As if she would be the outsider. Begging off had been easy. Finding a cup of coffee at a shop was simple.

Wiping the tears on the way to work and figuring out why she was so sensitive still plagued her.

“And so…how are things going living together?” Josie asked, a leer on her face, trying to scrub her own sad thoughts away.

“I’m not going to talk about my sex life anymore with you, Josie.”

“I’m not asking about your sex life,” she said. “I’m just asking how things are going.” Truth be told, she
wasn’t
asking about their sex life.
That
she knew more than enough about. What she wondered, though, was how you move in with two guys and live as a family unit. Laura had never lived with a guy before—at all—so this was an enormous step. Not quite marriage…but not
not
like marriage. Add in
two
guys and she figured there had to be a pretty significant adjustment phase.

“Okay,” Laura said, shoveling another spoonful of peanut-butter sauce into her mouth. “The hardest part is that these two have been living together for ten years or longer, and they used to live with Jill, so they have all these ideas about how it works to live in this.” She put her hands up in the air in a gesture of helplessness. “This…whatever-you-call-it, and I don’t. In some ways, I’m the odd person out in my own home and in my own…threesome.”

Huh. Josie wasn’t expecting to hear that. “What do you mean?”

After licking every drop of chocolate sauce off the rounded back of her spoon, Laura paused to explain. “Here’s an example. It’s first thing in the morning and I wake up to Dylan handing me a lovely decaf latte. Mike rolls over and snuggles and asks me how I’m feeling. They both put their hands on my belly and feel the baby kick, move around, or sing “Ave Maria.” You know, because
our
daughter is already gifted.” Laura shot her a big grin as she rolled her eyes playfully.

Josie felt sickly jealous. “And what’s wrong with all that?” She struggled to keep the incredulous tone, the one that screamed,
Why are you complaining?
out of her voice.
Jesus, woman. You have most of the coconut shrimp and two billionaires in your bed making you coffee. And your problem is…?
Biting her lower lip to avoid saying that aloud was leaving deep teeth marks in the pink flesh in her mouth.

“
That
I don’t mind. But then maybe I want a shower, but Dylan’s already in there, and so I have to wait. Meanwhile, Mike makes Dylan’s eggs exactly how he likes them, and has the plate set up when Dylan’s out of the shower. By the way, Dylan walks around naked most mornings, so—”

“Yeah, I noticed the morning I stopped by for coffee and got a bunch of eye candy instead.”

Laughing, Laura stood slowly, rotund and awkward. “Gotta pee. I’ll be right back.” Her waddle would have been funny on almost any other day, but right now it made Josie nearly cry, knowing that this was one of the last days—if not
the
last—before everything changed.

Sunlight poured through the front window of Jeddy’s, rays flashing across tabletops and chairs, the breakfast counter, and the rows upon rows of glasses ready to be filled for customers who hadn’t come in yet. Josie swallowed and took a deep breath, carefully cataloging her surroundings, taking a moment to be still, chuckling on the inside about how much that was like Mike. “Just be,” he would say at times when she came over to their house and talked about her problems.

And she knew he was right; moments like this confirmed it. As she took the time to look around, to breathe, to just
be
, she saw everything for what it was in a tiny flash of insight. Laura, walking away, ripe and ready, just waiting for the perfect moment for her baby to release itself from the tree that had given it life on the inside. That life would start on the outside soon—all too soon—if Josie and her intuition were right.

People moved on, didn’t they? She certainly had. The little girl from Peters, Ohio, the daughter of the sainted, late town librarian and the local barfly had gotten out of town as fast as she could, leaving everyone behind. Even Darla, her little cousin, who had become fatherless in the same famous moment eighteen years ago.

People move on.

Don’t they?

Laura’s daughter would have two fathers. A pang of mourning hit Josie like a brick thrown from an overpass, smashing her consciousness in the face and shattering the atmosphere of the steady hum from the restaurant. The room closed in with a cold gasp that she had to breathe her way out of, using Mike’s techniques, grateful now for the hours she’d spent in his presence, willing herself back to a surface-level calm.

“You okay?” Laura asked, returning to the table. She bent herself into a seated position that took the weight off her back, legs spread wide as she perched on the edge of her seat like a cello player.

Josie’s heart pounded in her chest, but her mind came back, the shattered pieces assembling into a loose facsimile of what she’d been seconds ago. Nodding, she kept her head down and pretended to eat a sliver of something from her plate, the texture like Styrofoam peanuts.

She pondered the way Laura’s hand grasped the fork as she ate her food with such joy and enjoyment, how Madge raced to and fro, not in a frantic way, but with purpose, with ruthless efficiency and with a drive that Josie admired. She wasn’t generally the type to get sappy or reflective like this. It came as a surprise, like so many other things these past few months. Staring at Laura, she felt her heart grow and a tiny part of her wanted to shave off just a little of what Laura had with Mike and Dylan, to hold it inside her chest, to turn to it when she was lonely or desperate.

The relationship that those three shared was something that Josie studied carefully. Everything from the nuanced looks between Dylan and Mike to Laura’s plaintive gasps as she described how the three had worked these past few months to fit together as one. Laughter filled most of their conversations. It was awkward for Laura to be the new one in a three-way relationship, but as time passed, she had navigated it with increasing grace and ever-lessening insecurity. Josie felt her preconceptions, about everything from what daily life must be like to whether Dylan really was as much of an ass as she had initially thought, melt away as Laura’s groundedness grew.

It turned out Dylan wasn’t an ass at all.

Being wrong was not part of Josie’s repertoire. Even that, though, was fading as she realized how much of the world she thought of in black and white terms. She was right,
they
were wrong. She was smart,
they
were idiots. She was emotionally evolved,
they
were assholes. You couldn’t see the world as black and white so easily in a long-term threesome relationship, could you? She opened her mouth to ask Laura that question, pretty much knowing the answer. Black and white means that there are only two options—so when there’s a third, that you absolutely have to include and respect, then how does that relationship math work?

“Where was I?” Laura asked. “Oh. Right. So the guys are on autopilot all the time. They’ve been together for ten years, and so this is all old hat to them. There’s no room for my ideas. For me to imprint on the way everything flows.”

As if knowing that Josie were about to ask her a question, Laura locked eyes with her. Before Josie could even open her mouth to speak, Laura’s eyes got wider than Josie had ever seen them, as if her eyeballs were about to pop out. The clanking of the fork against Laura’s plate was all Josie could hear as she watched her friend’s pale, creamy hand reach down below the table and grasp her abdomen, her head pitched down and an audible, long inhale coming through her nose.

“Braxton Hicks?” Madge muttered, eyebrow cocked up as she walked by.

Josie was starting to be on Madge’s side, silently counting to herself as Laura started to breathe again on the exhale, in and out, for what Josie counted to be thirty-seven seconds. The nurse in her shifted to a different kind of math, not relationship math but
labor
math. How long were the contractions? How many minutes apart were they? How intense were they?

Laura’s hands reached up for her face and smoothed her blonde waves away. Calm eyes peered back at Josie, though Laura’s face was considerably flushed. “It’s okay,” she said—long inhale, long exhale. “Just a crazy Braxton Hicks contraction.”

“Okay,” Josie said simply. Who was she to argue with a pregnant woman? Nature would win. No need to poke the ripe lady.

Laura reached for the fork and started to stuff a piece of cake in her mouth, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, she looked at Josie and said, “So, I have a business proposition for you.”

Whoa. Big topic shift. As her shoulders relaxed, Josie realized how relieved she was to change the conversation. More talk about the cozy world the threesome created threatened Josie’s tenuous stability right now.

“No. I won’t host a Mary Kay party for you,” Josie joked.

“No, not that. But, hey! You know, my mom did really well with them.”

“Yeah, I know. The pink Cadillac kind of tipped everybody off.”

Laura’s face went from an amused, flushed look to one of nostalgic sadness. Josie had only met Laura’s mom once, before she’d passed away a few years ago, a freak asthma attack that turned deadly. Obviously, she would never meet the baby—and Laura’s dad had taken off years ago. They’d bonded over being fatherless when they had met in college. It was a club no one wanted to be in.

It wasn’t a surprise to Josie that Laura, feeling alone in the world, had been so happy to find a whole instant family in Mike and Dylan.

“Laura, you realize ‘a business proposition’ makes it sound like you want to rope me into some MLM scheme.”

“MFM, actually.” Laura coughed.

“Wha?”

Laura put her fork down, leaning in, an intense stare practically pinning Josie in place. “I think, financially, we’re a little beyond that. MLM, I mean.”

“Well,” Josie answered. “Mike and Dylan are. You…”

Insecurity poured out of Laura in waves stronger than any contraction. “You know, just because the guys told me to quit my job and just take care of the baby and that they would support me, doesn’t mean—”

Josie held a palm up. She could see that Laura was on the verge of tears over this and had really struggled already, pride almost overriding their offer. “Laura—Laura, I’m just joking,” she assured her. “I know the drill, and if I were in your shoes I’d have quit in a heartbeat too. Trust me, anything to get out of the daily grind.”

“Anything?”

“Anything,” Josie said. “Do you have any idea what it’s like working on a research trial for Alzheimer’s? Talking to old people every day”—she corrected herself—“that’s fine. The problem is that I’m dealing with people who are deteriorating. So every time I see them for a new appointment, most of them, first of all, don’t remember me, and, second of all, they’re worsening. It’s pretty depressing to work a job where all of the people I see and serve are getting worse.”

Laura furrowed her brow. “You went into geriatric nursing, Josie,” she said slowly, as if talking to a child. “Didn’t you expect that to be the case?”

Leave it to Laura to state the obvious. “Sure,” Josie protested. “But Alzheimer’s is a different animal. It’s one thing to work with some ninety-year-old woman who forgets things once in a while but is otherwise sharp and has a body that’s failing her. You try seeing a sixty-two-year-old or a seventy-three-year-old with kids and grandkids, who points to his wife of thirty or forty years and says, ‘Can you tip the cab driver?’”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Day in and day out. Not nearly as hard, though, as having Dylan bring you coffee in bed and Mike not attune to your shower desires.”
Meow.
Where did that come from?

A patient, controlled look clouded Laura’s features. She took two deep breaths and smiled sweetly. “You really want me to start talking about the shower desires Mike does meet? Because I have some stories that—”

“Stop!” Josie shrieked, fingers in ears. “I deserved that. Just stop,” she begged.

“Go into another kind of nursing.” Laura tapped her belly. “Labor and delivery.”

Josie had an answer for that, but before she could open her mouth and spit it out, Laura leaned over again, grabbing her belly and doing the deep inhale. By Josie’s guess, that was about seven minutes. Slowly, Laura worked her way through the contraction—about the same amount of time as before, thirty-eight seconds. In her phone, Josie had programmed Mike’s number, Dylan’s number, the labor and delivery numbers for all the hospitals in the area, and even a handful of personal cell phone numbers for the OBs she knew in at least a casual way.

Without violating any confidentiality, Josie had called the doctors about a month before, explaining the basics of Laura’s situation. Depending on which professional she talked to, the polyhydramnios made the delivery moderate or high risk, but Laura was determined to have a natural birth.

Now was probably a really terrible time to explain to Laura that she would make a
horrible
labor and delivery nurse. During her rotation of clinicals as a nursing student she’d actually dropped a baby once—fortunately, only three or four inches before catching it again. And the experience had chilled her so deeply that she had no desire whatsoever to do it professionally. Be there with her friend through the whole thing, from start to finish, just as another body in the room there to support the mom? No problem. Have an actual professional role with responsibilities? No way.

Laura took a deep breath, drank about half of a glass of water, and gave Josie a giant smile. “Oh, well, maybe I’m just a little dehydrated.”

Or maybe you’re just about to have a baby,
Josie thought, but smiled back with the same fake look. “Okay,” she said.